Saturday, 8 August 2015

Mermaid Wedding

Today one of mine and Tom's close friends (the person who first introduced us) is getting married and I'm super excited! The bride is absolutely crazy about everything to do with the ocean, so much so she's even having a beach wedding (in the UK - very brave!) To honour the day I chose to create some mermaid style nail art with our new nail vinyls from Nail Mail. Unfortunately this design does not go with my dress so I won't be able to wear these to the actual ceremony.

I've been looking for good UK nail vinyls for a while but wasn't sure where to try. Eventually I posted a plea on Twitter and the lovely Lauren (The Naily Mail) put us on to Nail Mail, a UK based nail vinyl company. We were clearly in luck as shortly after Nail Mail got in touch and offered to send us out a few samples to test. I was amazed when the package arrived and it included so many stencils, houndstooth, chevrons, aztec, waves, stripes, to name a few, and most excitingly mermaid! I've been dying to try a mermaid design but there was no way I was going to attempt that bad boy freehand. I literally had my hands on the stencils for minutes before I cracked out the polish and got started.

The base is GOSH - Snow White*, two coats. I let this dry for ages and topped it with a thin coat of Seche to help it set (as advised by Nail Mail in their 'how to'). I then carefully applied the stencils to each nail and made sure they were fully pressed down. As I have tiny nails I got away with cutting the stencils in half and using one half on each nail. I then filled in the gaps with my chosen polish colours - Green With Envy*, Mercury*, Nymph*, Peppermint* and Azure* all from Rimmel. I should have used a small brush for this but I was too excited and used the polish brushes instead, this made it more difficult and fiddly - oops! I then peeled off the stencils and was very happy to see that the white base had stayed put, and I only smudged a couple of bits. Not bad for a first effort!

I must be honest and state that this was my first time using nail vinyls, I've only used striping tape in the past, so my review does not have anything to compare against. However, I was really pleased with the Nail Mail product. The vinyls are robust and strong enough to cope with my cumbersome manner. They are sticky enough to apply well to the nail but not pull away all your polish - always a win. There was no seepage under the vinyls so the edges were lovely and crisp (except where I smudged and had to do a tiny bit of touching up, totally my own fault).

The only fault I found with these vinyls is that the designs are quite large. I have tiny nails so I was worried that I would not fit much of the pattern on each nail. It turned out not to be a problem as I love the way they look, but I would also like to try mermaid with a closer pattern. Hardly a deal breaker!

Three sets of mermaid scale decals will set you back £3.95, plus a small P&P which we think is pretty good value. You lucky people can also use the code: LOVEVINYL to receive 10% at www.nail-mail.co.uk (we'll be using it to get ourselves some Mess Free Mani we think!) Follow Nail Mail on Twitter and Instagram to see what other bloggers have created with their products.

Vinyls allow you to create gorgeous nail art with very little skill involved, what a great way to push yourself outside your normal nail comfort zone!

Finally (sorry for the long one) I'd like to wish Marielle a wonderful wedding day and every happiness for married life ahead. Sorry you can't be a mermaid, but you can always have mermaid nails!